A more honest map of voting methods

I've been annoyed recently by the world map in the No to AV campaign's leaflet. It shows the handful of countries which use AV, and hints by omission that the rest of the world uses FPTP. In fact, many more countries use some variant of PR, but Clegg couldn't negotiate a referendum for that. This map gives you a flavour of how systems are distributed worldwide (based, generally, on how the larger house in a bicameral system is elected, and ignoring smaller houses or presidential elections), and how high the countries score on the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index. Darker is more authoritarian. Red is FPTP, green is AV, blue is PR, dark grey is undemocratic; clicking on the map will make the key for the rest more legible.

Of the top ten countries by that index, 7 use primarily some version of PR; Australia uses AV; New Zealand uses a mixed-member proportional system (this returns a governing body whose composition is determined by PR, but some of whose members are elected by constituencies, preserving local accountability in a PR system); and Canada uses FPTP. The UK and the USA place 17th and 19th respectively. I've subdivided PR systems a bit to show countries which use FPTP as part of the method for selecting MPs for a PR house.

Looking at the red (FPTP) portions of the map, it's fair to say that using FPTP is not exactly a guarantee of a well-run, democratic society, and of course, it's equally fair to say the same for PR or AV. It is not fair to say that AV shouldn't be used because so few other countries use it. Nor is it fair to say it's complicated: number the candidates starting with your favourite, then your second best option, continuing till you reach the candidates you couldn't care less about. There would be no compulsion to order all of them; the reason this method isn't adored in Australia is that voting, and expressing a preference for every candidate, is required, which makes voting quite a complex task, but this is not planned for the UK.

I'm not going to go into the pros and cons in detail (actually, given the option, I suspect I'd prefer an MMP system, but it isn't on the table), but I'll link to a couple of good expositions here, with a shorter version by the same blogger here, and an Irish perspective here.

Thanks to mindstalk for pointing out some errors in the colour coding.